Facilitating Collaboration - Week 5

Wow, this week I found tons of Web 2.0 resources. I checked out the Go2Web20 and All Things Web 2.0 sites this week and was almost overwhelmed with what I found on those pages. I have had teachers ask me for site and application recommendations for their classrooms in the past few years and have always looked at purchasing some tool to fulfill their needs. With these sites I found almost everything for free! This is going to be a great resource for me and my teachers.

I am still working on my Google site. I have the pages created. Now I need to add content, graphics, and mess around with the page colors a bit. So far Google Sites is really easy to use and, since it is part of the Google Apps package that our school uses, readily available for our teachers to use without signing up for any additional accounts.

Facilitating Collaboration - Week 4

This week was another great week of resources for my job. I spent a lot of time researching the screencast solutions. In the past I have used different applications like Snap Pro X or Quicktime to record desktop movies. I then had to find ways to publish or distribute these videos.

After checking out some of the options, I chose to use Screenr for my assignment. What I liked about this was how easy it was to use and that it was connected to my Twitter account. My goal for a couple of years has been to create short tutorial videos to replace the over 100 page technology manual that we distribute to teachers. I plan on having a Twitter account setup so that each time I post something a message is sent out to a group e-mail address so all teachers and staff get a message. Now, as I create these videos I can automatically Tweet that it is done and all teachers and staff will get notification about it.

I also spent time this week working on my Google Sites pages. I have been working on a site for the Messmer Tech department for a while and this is going to motivate me to get it done. Still lots to do to get this ready before school starts.